Super Taranta!

Self-proclaimed "gypsy punks" offer another disc of eclectic, breakneck rock that's as exhausting to listen to as it must be to play.

One look at the etymology of the word "gypsy" and it becomes immediately clear why the Romani people, their descendants and distant cousins, often find the generalized term so distasteful, if not outright derogatory. The word "gypsy" stems from a mistaken early belief that the Roma came from Egypt, and was long invoked as a pejorative to impugn their trustworthiness. Relatively recently, historians have more accurately traced Roma roots back to India, but they somehow wound up dispersed throughout the Middle East, what used to be the Soviet Union, Africa, the Americas and, of course, Europe and the Balkans.

New York is the ultimate mixing pot and one of the few places on earth where you'll find people from all of those disparate places. New York is also, in essence, a city of gypsies, packed with people at once proud of their roots and their rootlessness. Gogol Bordello leader Eugene Hutz hails from the Ukraine, but from his brash appropriation of the word "gypsy" to the way his band (composed of a polyglot crew of diverse origins) incorporates just about every style of music that fits in the busy mix, he's a New Yorker to the core. Traditional Roma music draws from countless strains of folk. Gogol Bordello tosses in punk guitars and tempos, reggae, dance music, and whatever else strikes their fancy. It's the sound of the world, the West via the East, and from Beirut to Balkan Beat Box and even Basement Jaxx, it's become a full-on trend.

Yet you know a trend has not just fully arrived but may actually be on the wane when Madonna finally co-opts it. Indeed, seeing members of self-proclaimed "gypsy punks" Gogol Bordello on stage with the Material Matron during the naval gazing Live Earth festival hints that Eastern European folk-influenced rock acts may have reached maximum visibility. Really, how much accordion, horn, and fiddle kitsch can we take?

Apparently a lot, especially if done right. The gypsy-rock subgenre has thrived for decades. Wedding Present guitarist Peter Solowka did it with the frantic John Peel faves the Ukrainians. Camper Van Beethoven did it, and those Santa Cruz goofballs cited 1960s worldly psychedelic folk antecedents Kaleidoscope as one of their key inspirations. Maybe, rather than fade, the field will never shrink and only continue to grow, as more and more residents of the diffuse global village identify themselves-- both literally and figuratively-- as gypsy.

But as the novelty of bands like Gogol Bordello wears off, its music, ironically enough, begins to sound more and more like a novelty. While I was playing the group's new album Super Taranta! my mother-in-law walked into the room and asked me if I was listening to Weird Al. I shrugged off the query, but she had a point. Gogol Bordello is an exceedingly silly band, and even if it's not laugh-out-loud ha ha funny, there's more than a little ridiculousness to its self-consciously eclectic kitchen-sink approach.

Sure, the band knows how to entertain-- its breathless, breakneck live sets are the stuff of legend. But unlike the rough and ready Steve Albini-helmed Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike, Super Taranta! adds little to the group's musical vocabulary-- to be fair, perhaps an impossibility. When you start out with everything and anything, where do you go next?

The closest relative to the group is the oft-cited Pogues, but the Pogues-- with their marriage of the traditional and the iconoclastic-- pulled off the trick with poetry and craft. Gogol Bordello, on the other hand, is more crass, all about the superficial rush, but without much going on beneath the surface; consequently, the rush grows exhausting. The music is spirited, but lacks soul, and after you've heard the insane three and a half minutes of the first track "Ultimate", you pretty much get the point.

That's not to dismiss the pleasures of "Harem in Tuscany (Taranta)", the party crashing thrash of "American Wedding", or the adenoidal reggae of "Tribal Connection". But just as you can't listen to a light show, music this theatrical demands a stage. On disc it plays a bit like a conversation-starting party favor: colorful and bright, but no substitute for actually being there.